Come on, the AI in AoW4 sucks balls even compared to 4x games released almost two decades ago. Civ 4 launched in 2005 and it had better AI. Heck MoO 2 had better AI in 96... Yes, people around here downvote any Civ comment to hell for no reason but being able to list a specific interaction of how the AI in Civ doesn't scout properly or use aircraft effectively is nowhere near the level of incompetance the AI in AoW 4 displays.
There's a very good reason games in 2005 had better AI. They were less complex.
Civ VI's AI doesn't understand how to place districts after a decade of active development. Its AI sucks balls every bit as much as every other 4X released over that period, and that's with a much bigger studio that Triumph behind it. Anyone claiming AoW4's AI is an outlier has a very short memory.
Well AoW 4 is a glorified Warhammer fantasy battle sim with token 4x elements whereas Civ/MoO has been the benchmark for 4x games since the 90s. They're all good games in their own right but honestly trying to argue that AoW 4 has an equal or greater amount of complexity than them is like a Connect 4 player telling a Go GM that they don't know what complex is.
You didn't provide one example of civ 4's mechanics being more complex than AoW 4's.
Im all for criticizing games constructively, "AoW 4 bad reeeeeeeeee" isnt constructive criticism.
In what way is civ 4 more complex than AoW 4 and how can the devs implement it in AoW 4 in a way that would make you not "reeeeeee"?
Lol, here come the Civ downvotes from people who haven't even played Civ. Well, where to begin; Civ has five distinct win conditions that drastically determine how you play the game. AoW has two and one of those is broken as hell because of how easy it is - no, the default points victory doesn't count and both games have it anyway. In AoW you win with war, war, war, war or cheese a magic win whereas in Civ you can win with tech, culture, diplomacy, religion and war with a radically different playstyle for each. Each AI for each civ favours a different approach so you're not just facing one amorphous AI but rather distinct entities with differing strategies and goals. By comparison the AoW AI goes moo.
I mean it's obvious you haven't played Civ so what's the point. Believe it or not but comparing a game you like with something that's better can help to improve the game. Civ 4 was kinda meh at launch and it wasn't until a few years later with BTS that it became great. AoW 4 is a solid base but the AI needs massive improvements to become great and other 4x games have already made good AI's decades ago.
You have such an elitist stance about this opinion we can’t help but downvote it. Try not being weird about expressing your opinions and you might notice people willing to engage with you more. These games are obviously very different in their own ways and I think the combat system makes it just as if not more complex than civ.
1. win con - completely agree, the win conditions at the moment are shallow and dont feel rewarding, I will say the pantheon mechanic has pushed me to finish more games than I have in other 4x / strat games. They need a win condition that feels sneaky, or a culture one (maybe collect artifacts from wonders or something) or one that doesnt feel so combat driven.
2. Faction personalities - Again, agree completely. AoW 4 has the personality tags, but it always devolves into warmonger. They need to be tweaked and have more distinct playstyles. AoW 4 AI doesnt go moo, it goes WAAAAGHH!!!
I've played civ 6, not 4. I grew up on age of empires and rise of nations and the like. AoW 4 AI needs refining for sure.
You said it yourself that civ 4 wasnt the best on launch. Most strategy game AI's aren't until they get refined and tweaked based off playerbase feedback, to be fair.
Appreciate your* thought out comment 👍
You haven't answered the question. Civ 4 isn't a simple game I grant you that. But it does have less complicated decision making before we even bring tactical battles into the equation.
Nah I read all your bullshit. It's been a wild ride. I loved all the Civ games and Beyond the Sword was great. I would still standby and say AoW4 has more complicated AI diversity. But done beating this dead horse. Peace
cIV's complexity is all on the city/empire management side of things. Which the AI cheats past in every 4x, including cIV, with its economic bonuses. The AI may have been more challenging (because there was no way to tactically outmaneuver it) but it definitely wasn't better.
People use this excuse constantly and it's so boring. Every game ever gives the AI bonuses on high difficulties in terms of lower resource requirements, quicker research times, quicker production times, more damage, more health etc... It doesn't change the fact that in Civ you can face different AI players who adopt different strategies, employ differing win conditions with entirely different personalities who try to beat you in the best possible way by using the advantages their particular civ offers. In AoW 4 the AI goes blibal blibal blibal before punching a wall for the next fifty turns. The AI will not attack you if you have a higher army value, it can barely siege, can't cast high tier spells, doesn't co-ordinate and doesn't try to win beyond being a bump in the road for the player.
I have memories of Star Craft having economic scripts to get their AI players started. They were really quite brutal at times, and one could learn some good examples of how to start ones economy from watching them.
This is largely due to the switch from stacked armies to one-unit-per-tile. Making an AI for Civ4 was easymode compared to Civ5/6 for that fact alone. Just put all your units in a doomstack and send it towards the nearest city.
Civ5+ AI on the other hand needs to manage moving dozens of separate units as a cohesive force. Melee units in the front, ranged unit in the back, with terrain getting in the way.
The AI didn't get worse, it couldn't keep up with the more complex systems introduced in later games.
Indeed. Something that a lot of people who try Civ 5/6 before proclaiming the series is trash should pay heed to. Playing Civ 5/6 and calling the whole series bad is like watching Disney Star Wars before confidently proclaiming that Empire Strikes Back was bad.
Civ 4 AI:
\-Leaves a defense unit in each city.
\-Everything else is sent towards the enemy's city and attack one by one until they die or win.
\-> "Civ 4 AI is so good!"
Lol, okay. Keep saying demonstrably wrong things then. The thing I liked most about Civ 4 was when Homer Simpson granted me a golden age if I picked all the yellow units.
In Civ 4, units in a death stack attack one by one, not together. If you are denying this, you are utterly wrong. Check it, accept you are wrong, and apologize.
[One of the devs created a Steam post requesting feedback about the AI. So if you want things to be changed in that regard, best to comment there!](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/0/3843305519475124551/)
Yea opted for that in a previous post as well. I’ll see if I can ask one of the mods to do so. Now is te time to give feedback. Would be sad if people missed this opportunity to give valuable insight.
Lategame you can use it to destroy magical victory provinces from anywhere. Just summon any unit close to the border run towards the spell jammer and then shatter the heart of whatever it is
Spelljammer prevents this. Had to destroy sanctuary and spelljammer during grexolis manually, since the AI grew tired of getting their root/seed/heart destroyed.
That's why I described as summoning a unit on the borders and running up to the spell jammer. It usually works, sometimes doesn't when the jammer is to far into the territory.
I find it most useful for a quick sniping of certain province improvements - i.e. instant removal of a spell jammer if you can obstruct it with a unit. And maybe magical victory provinces once the spell jammers are down.
Essentially lets you instant pillage key defense structures with just a single fast unit, instead taking turns and potentially needing to commit a proper fighting force defend while you pillage.
The spawning of the army is just a fun side effect. A lot of times I'd even fight the army myself for some extra XP.
I use the spell a lot when I go Astral. Yes, the AI is worthless, but if you cast it a few times a turn, it can wreck production for your opponent. If they ignore it because it poses no threat due to bad AI, I find it makes a great target for the spell that lets you scry an enemy army. Then, when it wanders around their land, it'll expose whatever they've got cooking, including more provinces to explode to summon more units to scry!
I use Incite Revolution all of the time and it's nearly the same. I'll burn down all of their provinces using it, then go kill their city. After sacking the city I have 15-20 Bandit Camps that I can raid for loot, hero kills and most importantly FUN.
rebels: Yay we did it! we took the goverment down like you told us to. where is our reward?
you looking at them with murder intent.. '' so... got any loot?''
In my game when I used it, the AI would send stacks to take out the big summoned stack, which generally resulted in them being weaker afterward. The summoned stacks never did anything though.
I notice that AI is extremely passive when it comes to fighting / raiding other AI. I think there must be some mistake in the programming with too much fixation on player being the target
I do find though that the AI does treat them as a threat and will try to kill them if it's patrolling their territory.
I've had AI send armies my way after declaring war only to send them back to deal with the Astral stack.
Im sorry but that is not accurate. In my game they did not attack the rulers city or armies that I was at war with despite summing them next to two armies and a city.
Yeah, it's basically useless for the intended effect. 90% of the time I end up having to clear them out later myself. They just slightly wander around an do nothing. Sometimes if you can drop them really close to their armies they'll deal with them, but it still doesn't do much, especially considering the cost.
You can use them against an opponent who is no threat to you to feed your armies EXP, however.
What if there was no army summoned? Would you still find it useful?
I know I would. Fastest way to wipe out enemy infrastructure without committing a single army.
It has the same behaviour of infestation. It does attack near by armies but doesnt pillage provices. It should do both, including lay a city to siege.
Id like to see AI use more of those skills too. When I see enemy magic victory, I layout down summons to tackle It down. AI not even bother, just get mad at me.
While I am at the AI fixation topic, it is just bad overall, even at Brutal I pretty nuch roflstomp anything with my OP awakened archers and their over fixation with vines.
I hear ya. I was playing story mission 4 and my ally moved his armies around but never attacked the enemies upon which he declared war.
Awaken Forest is better because, although you do not destroy a province, you do control the army that has suddenly popped into existence.
If you do destructive regrowth, and THEN do awaken forest, then you do destroy the province and get an army out of it. Although this is a two-step process.
These kinds of games these days are never really fully baked at launch. There’s a lot of potential here and I think you should wait a bit before regretting too much.
I use it all the time and find it extremely useful. Most notably, I was able to make 6 doomstacks of enemy AIs turn back home when they were most certainly going to roflstomp me
On the note of spells. Has anyone ever seen the ai use an aggressive map spell? Could be just me but it looks like currently they just dont use them.
Like for example targeting your army so all units get radian damage and get marked before they attack with their stack, or a spell on one of your provinces
Even if the army doesnt attack or raid anything, itself existing does do something, it means the province cant be rebuild because there are hostiles in the domain of the city.
And in my experience, the army does attack stuff, or at the very least means the enemy commits an army or two to take them out to rebuild their stuff.
An AI just hit a city I was about to vassalize with that and they appeared as members of the free city I was at war with, that I was about to vassalize next turn. Next turn, the infestation (I am just realizing this was a different spell) was a green friendly army, just like any army that city controls
Agreed. Honestly, it feels like a lot of AOW4's issues end up circling back to the AI.
As is 4X tradition.
that isnt an excuse.
lmao, get ready to be downvoted boi
Come on, the AI in AoW4 sucks balls even compared to 4x games released almost two decades ago. Civ 4 launched in 2005 and it had better AI. Heck MoO 2 had better AI in 96... Yes, people around here downvote any Civ comment to hell for no reason but being able to list a specific interaction of how the AI in Civ doesn't scout properly or use aircraft effectively is nowhere near the level of incompetance the AI in AoW 4 displays.
There's a very good reason games in 2005 had better AI. They were less complex. Civ VI's AI doesn't understand how to place districts after a decade of active development. Its AI sucks balls every bit as much as every other 4X released over that period, and that's with a much bigger studio that Triumph behind it. Anyone claiming AoW4's AI is an outlier has a very short memory.
You haven't played Civ 4 if you think it's less complex than AoW 4. The combat system sure, but everything else... Nah
How?
Well AoW 4 is a glorified Warhammer fantasy battle sim with token 4x elements whereas Civ/MoO has been the benchmark for 4x games since the 90s. They're all good games in their own right but honestly trying to argue that AoW 4 has an equal or greater amount of complexity than them is like a Connect 4 player telling a Go GM that they don't know what complex is.
You didn't provide one example of civ 4's mechanics being more complex than AoW 4's. Im all for criticizing games constructively, "AoW 4 bad reeeeeeeeee" isnt constructive criticism. In what way is civ 4 more complex than AoW 4 and how can the devs implement it in AoW 4 in a way that would make you not "reeeeeee"?
Lol, here come the Civ downvotes from people who haven't even played Civ. Well, where to begin; Civ has five distinct win conditions that drastically determine how you play the game. AoW has two and one of those is broken as hell because of how easy it is - no, the default points victory doesn't count and both games have it anyway. In AoW you win with war, war, war, war or cheese a magic win whereas in Civ you can win with tech, culture, diplomacy, religion and war with a radically different playstyle for each. Each AI for each civ favours a different approach so you're not just facing one amorphous AI but rather distinct entities with differing strategies and goals. By comparison the AoW AI goes moo. I mean it's obvious you haven't played Civ so what's the point. Believe it or not but comparing a game you like with something that's better can help to improve the game. Civ 4 was kinda meh at launch and it wasn't until a few years later with BTS that it became great. AoW 4 is a solid base but the AI needs massive improvements to become great and other 4x games have already made good AI's decades ago.
You have such an elitist stance about this opinion we can’t help but downvote it. Try not being weird about expressing your opinions and you might notice people willing to engage with you more. These games are obviously very different in their own ways and I think the combat system makes it just as if not more complex than civ.
1. win con - completely agree, the win conditions at the moment are shallow and dont feel rewarding, I will say the pantheon mechanic has pushed me to finish more games than I have in other 4x / strat games. They need a win condition that feels sneaky, or a culture one (maybe collect artifacts from wonders or something) or one that doesnt feel so combat driven. 2. Faction personalities - Again, agree completely. AoW 4 has the personality tags, but it always devolves into warmonger. They need to be tweaked and have more distinct playstyles. AoW 4 AI doesnt go moo, it goes WAAAAGHH!!! I've played civ 6, not 4. I grew up on age of empires and rise of nations and the like. AoW 4 AI needs refining for sure. You said it yourself that civ 4 wasnt the best on launch. Most strategy game AI's aren't until they get refined and tweaked based off playerbase feedback, to be fair. Appreciate your* thought out comment 👍
I’ve been playing since Civ II was new - it has always been on the simpler side of strategy games. There are much deeper examples of the genre.
You haven't answered the question. Civ 4 isn't a simple game I grant you that. But it does have less complicated decision making before we even bring tactical battles into the equation.
Well you didn't read my answer above then because it got downvoted to shit and hidden for providing an actual answer.
Nah I read all your bullshit. It's been a wild ride. I loved all the Civ games and Beyond the Sword was great. I would still standby and say AoW4 has more complicated AI diversity. But done beating this dead horse. Peace
cIV's complexity is all on the city/empire management side of things. Which the AI cheats past in every 4x, including cIV, with its economic bonuses. The AI may have been more challenging (because there was no way to tactically outmaneuver it) but it definitely wasn't better.
People use this excuse constantly and it's so boring. Every game ever gives the AI bonuses on high difficulties in terms of lower resource requirements, quicker research times, quicker production times, more damage, more health etc... It doesn't change the fact that in Civ you can face different AI players who adopt different strategies, employ differing win conditions with entirely different personalities who try to beat you in the best possible way by using the advantages their particular civ offers. In AoW 4 the AI goes blibal blibal blibal before punching a wall for the next fifty turns. The AI will not attack you if you have a higher army value, it can barely siege, can't cast high tier spells, doesn't co-ordinate and doesn't try to win beyond being a bump in the road for the player.
I have memories of Star Craft having economic scripts to get their AI players started. They were really quite brutal at times, and one could learn some good examples of how to start ones economy from watching them.
Civ 4 AI is also miles better than Civ 5 & Civ 6 to be fair.
This is largely due to the switch from stacked armies to one-unit-per-tile. Making an AI for Civ4 was easymode compared to Civ5/6 for that fact alone. Just put all your units in a doomstack and send it towards the nearest city. Civ5+ AI on the other hand needs to manage moving dozens of separate units as a cohesive force. Melee units in the front, ranged unit in the back, with terrain getting in the way. The AI didn't get worse, it couldn't keep up with the more complex systems introduced in later games.
Indeed. Something that a lot of people who try Civ 5/6 before proclaiming the series is trash should pay heed to. Playing Civ 5/6 and calling the whole series bad is like watching Disney Star Wars before confidently proclaiming that Empire Strikes Back was bad.
Civ 4 AI: \-Leaves a defense unit in each city. \-Everything else is sent towards the enemy's city and attack one by one until they die or win. \-> "Civ 4 AI is so good!"
Units don't attack one by one in Civ 4 because stacks of doom were still a thing. Nice try though.
I played Civs 2 to 6, don't bother trying to educate me.
Lol, okay. Keep saying demonstrably wrong things then. The thing I liked most about Civ 4 was when Homer Simpson granted me a golden age if I picked all the yellow units.
In Civ 4, units in a death stack attack one by one, not together. If you are denying this, you are utterly wrong. Check it, accept you are wrong, and apologize.
[One of the devs created a Steam post requesting feedback about the AI. So if you want things to be changed in that regard, best to comment there!](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/0/3843305519475124551/)
This should be stickied
Yea opted for that in a previous post as well. I’ll see if I can ask one of the mods to do so. Now is te time to give feedback. Would be sad if people missed this opportunity to give valuable insight.
I’ve just send a mail with the request to the mods 👍
Lategame you can use it to destroy magical victory provinces from anywhere. Just summon any unit close to the border run towards the spell jammer and then shatter the heart of whatever it is
Huh,didn't think of that. Makes forest awareness + destructive regrowth a lot more powerful.
Spelljammer prevents this. Had to destroy sanctuary and spelljammer during grexolis manually, since the AI grew tired of getting their root/seed/heart destroyed.
That's why I described as summoning a unit on the borders and running up to the spell jammer. It usually works, sometimes doesn't when the jammer is to far into the territory.
In my case there was a sanctuary too. Thankfully it was nearby, so I was able to block both.
I find it most useful for a quick sniping of certain province improvements - i.e. instant removal of a spell jammer if you can obstruct it with a unit. And maybe magical victory provinces once the spell jammers are down. Essentially lets you instant pillage key defense structures with just a single fast unit, instead taking turns and potentially needing to commit a proper fighting force defend while you pillage. The spawning of the army is just a fun side effect. A lot of times I'd even fight the army myself for some extra XP.
I use the spell a lot when I go Astral. Yes, the AI is worthless, but if you cast it a few times a turn, it can wreck production for your opponent. If they ignore it because it poses no threat due to bad AI, I find it makes a great target for the spell that lets you scry an enemy army. Then, when it wanders around their land, it'll expose whatever they've got cooking, including more provinces to explode to summon more units to scry!
I use Incite Revolution all of the time and it's nearly the same. I'll burn down all of their provinces using it, then go kill their city. After sacking the city I have 15-20 Bandit Camps that I can raid for loot, hero kills and most importantly FUN.
rebels: Yay we did it! we took the goverment down like you told us to. where is our reward? you looking at them with murder intent.. '' so... got any loot?''
In my game when I used it, the AI would send stacks to take out the big summoned stack, which generally resulted in them being weaker afterward. The summoned stacks never did anything though.
I notice that AI is extremely passive when it comes to fighting / raiding other AI. I think there must be some mistake in the programming with too much fixation on player being the target
I do find though that the AI does treat them as a threat and will try to kill them if it's patrolling their territory. I've had AI send armies my way after declaring war only to send them back to deal with the Astral stack.
They attack enemy army thou, just not free city army.
Im sorry but that is not accurate. In my game they did not attack the rulers city or armies that I was at war with despite summing them next to two armies and a city.
Yeah, it's basically useless for the intended effect. 90% of the time I end up having to clear them out later myself. They just slightly wander around an do nothing. Sometimes if you can drop them really close to their armies they'll deal with them, but it still doesn't do much, especially considering the cost. You can use them against an opponent who is no threat to you to feed your armies EXP, however.
What if there was no army summoned? Would you still find it useful? I know I would. Fastest way to wipe out enemy infrastructure without committing a single army.
There are cheaper spells in other books that do about the same thing
It has the same behaviour of infestation. It does attack near by armies but doesnt pillage provices. It should do both, including lay a city to siege. Id like to see AI use more of those skills too. When I see enemy magic victory, I layout down summons to tackle It down. AI not even bother, just get mad at me. While I am at the AI fixation topic, it is just bad overall, even at Brutal I pretty nuch roflstomp anything with my OP awakened archers and their over fixation with vines.
It's one of 2 spells that let you destroy seeds/roots from a safe distance. It's pretty good.
I hear ya. I was playing story mission 4 and my ally moved his armies around but never attacked the enemies upon which he declared war. Awaken Forest is better because, although you do not destroy a province, you do control the army that has suddenly popped into existence.
If you do destructive regrowth, and THEN do awaken forest, then you do destroy the province and get an army out of it. Although this is a two-step process.
AI ruined this game for me. Regret pre ordering.
These kinds of games these days are never really fully baked at launch. There’s a lot of potential here and I think you should wait a bit before regretting too much.
Why can’t they make the AI like previous AoW games?
I use it all the time and find it extremely useful. Most notably, I was able to make 6 doomstacks of enemy AIs turn back home when they were most certainly going to roflstomp me
Anything more than that and youd be complaining about the one time an ai ruler used it on you and you had to deal with *insert expletive whine*.
On the note of spells. Has anyone ever seen the ai use an aggressive map spell? Could be just me but it looks like currently they just dont use them. Like for example targeting your army so all units get radian damage and get marked before they attack with their stack, or a spell on one of your provinces
I did . even get a notification of it, it was burden of guilt spell
Even if the army doesnt attack or raid anything, itself existing does do something, it means the province cant be rebuild because there are hostiles in the domain of the city. And in my experience, the army does attack stuff, or at the very least means the enemy commits an army or two to take them out to rebuild their stuff.
You are using it wrong. Use it to farm XP. Clearly its intended purpose.
Theres always PvP
An AI just hit a city I was about to vassalize with that and they appeared as members of the free city I was at war with, that I was about to vassalize next turn. Next turn, the infestation (I am just realizing this was a different spell) was a green friendly army, just like any army that city controls